Set Up Amazon SNS Notifications

Amazon CloudWatch uses Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send email. First you create and subscribe to an SNS topic.
When you create a CloudWatch alarm, you can add this SNS topic to send an email notification when the alarm changes state.
For more information, see the Amazon Simple Notification Service Getting Started Guide.

Tip

Alternatively, if you plan to create your CloudWatch alarm using the AWS Management Console, you can skip this procedure because
you can create the topic through the Create Alarm Wizard.

Set Up an SNS Topic Using the AWS Management Console

First you create a topic, then you subscribe to it.
You can optionally publish a test message to the topic.